MUMBAI, Nov 27 — Women staff no longer greet guests with warm smiles and the traditional ‘namaste’ at the gates of Mumbai’s iconic Taj Mahal Palace Tower Hotel the way they once did.
Today, men in white uniforms are there instead, making guests walk through metal detectors and giving them body checks with hand-held devices while they put their luggage through X-ray machines.
But that is the only visible change that old timers notice a year after a band of terrorists ravaged the landmark hotel known as the Gateway of India.
Indeed, business is almost back to normal at the 565-room hotel with its panoramic view of the Arabian Sea.
“We reopened 25 days after the attack,” Nikhila Palat, the hotel’s public relations manager, said as guests — both Indian and foreign — chatted at the lobby or went about their business.
So far, only the high-rise Tower has reopened. The original heritage palace, with its distinctive red domes, is still under renovation.
“The fifth and sixth storeys of the Palace had suffered considerable damage,” said Palat. “We are utilising the renovation to introduce state of the art facilities to make the hotel on par with the finest hotels in the world.”
There were hundreds of guests when four terrorists seized the hotel. During the more than 60-hour hostage drama, they killed 31 people — 19 guests of various nationalities and 12 hotel staff.
Some other targets
Chatrapati Shivaji train station, formerly known as Victoria Terminus
Said to be the world’s most crowded railway station, it operates more than 1,000 trains daily that transport an estimated three million people. Of the six terror targets on Nov 26 last year, the railway station had the highest number of deaths. Fifty-eight were killed and 104 injured at the station.
A year on, security is still lax, as commuters dodge security checks and bags are not searched.
Leopold Cafe
A cracked corner wall mirror with a bullet hole is the only reminder of the attack on Leopold Cafe, perhaps Mumbai’s best-known watering hole.
“The management decided to leave it as it is as a tribute to those who died in the attack,” waiter Sunil Kumar said as he tended to customers that included a large number of foreigners.
Eleven people were killed in the cafe after two terrorists, who arrived in a taxi, opened fire indiscriminately and lobbed grenades at patrons and staff.
Nariman House
Some of the worst fighting between the terrorists and the elite National Security Guards (NSG) took place at Nariman House, the city’s Jewish centre.
Among the nine people killed were Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife Rivka, directors of the centre. They died along with four of their Jewish guests and an NSG officer.
The bullet-ridden walls with gaping holes left by rocket-propelled grenades as well as broken windows and furniture bear testimony to the horror unleashed by the terrorists. — The Straits Times
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